Just when you thought you’d survived all your brushes with apocalypse, Arcade Fire blow into town. Beneath a gigantic oval eye watching over the crowd, a swarm of shadows take to Koko’s stage; there appear to be nine of them but they roam around and swap instruments so liberally that it’s tough to keep count. The Canadian rabble rockers’ first UK show in four years marks the reopening of the iconic Camden venue following a £70m refurb, £69.9999m of which must have gone on the reportedly palatial new members club areas while regular punters get a new roll of carpet in the entrance corridor. But for all the praises that frontman Win Butler sings to the place between the band’s intoxicating melodic barrages – it does injustice to call them mere “songs” – he’s here to demolish it on launch night.
As rabid reflectors of mankind’s social and ideological ills – consumerism, religious manipulation, suburban ennui, war – Arcade Fire have had a fertile few years to draw upon. Butler apparently wrote two or three albums during lockdown and their forthcoming sixth, WE, tackles topics ranging from the insidious nature of online life to the collapse of western democracy. Here, they open with the glowering piano and rapid heartbeats of “Age of Anxiety I”, wracked with the tension of the times and exposing the shallow facades of ourselves that we post and the insecurities they hide. As Butler’s creative cohort and spouse Regine Chassange takes to the stage front firing lasers from her fingers (later she’ll also model a chunky laser belt, like Tyson Fury joining The Chemical Brothers) the song becomes a gothic rave tune, setting the tone for the evening. Tonight, we shall be dancing through the wreckage of a world.
